According to a ChainCatcher report, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb disclosed in an announcement that an operational error occurred during the distribution of event rewards, resulting in the erroneous distribution of a total of 620,000 bitcoins to 695 users (instead of the previously speculated 2,000 bitcoins). Bithumb quickly froze the trading and withdrawal functions of the affected accounts within 35 minutes of discovering the problem. As of the time of writing, 618,212 bitcoins have been successfully recovered, representing 99.7% of the erroneously distributed amount. The assets corresponding to the 1,788 bitcoins already sold have also been recovered (93%).
The announcement emphasized that no Bitcoin was transferred to external wallets in this incident, and that it did not involve hacking or security vulnerabilities. The exchange promised to use its own assets to make up for the unrecovered Bitcoins and to redesign the asset distribution process and strengthen its internal control system to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
